Early Modern

Question 1

What was Early Modern Britain like?

Answer 1

• Most people continued to work in the countryside and bad harvests could lead to hunger.
• Most people began to move around in search of land or work.
• Roads were built and stagecoach travel became popular.
• Under the Tudor monarchs, the power of the state grew.
• After the execution of King Charles 1 in 1649, England was ruled as a republic until 1660. After 1660, the monarch had limited power and the country was ruled by large landowners who became MPs.
• The invention of printing press at the end of the 15th century helped more people read and write.
• England became more prosperous but life for poor labouring families was tough.
• By 1759, 1/5 of the population lived in towns; London was the largest city in Europe.
• Englands population grew from around 2.4 million in 1520 to 4.1 million in 1600.
• International trade grew; the government charged high taxes on luxury imported goods.
• The Reformation led to changes in religion and subjects were required to follow the official state religion chosen by the monarch.
• Puritans tried to enforce higher standards of Christian behaviour.

Question 2

What did the population growth lead to?

Answer 2

• There was a dramatic increase in crime from the mid-16th century until the mid-17th century due to the huge increase in population, failing wages and rising prices.
• When harvests failed because of bad weather, or if there was a decrease in demand for English woollen cloth, people had no choice but leave their village and become vagrants.
• In Elizabethan England, printed pamphlets and books sensationalised gangs of vagrants committing thefts, assaults and murders.
• Thomas Harman’s book of 1568 warned of dangerous ‘rogues’ and ‘vagabonds’ roaming the land.
• In reality, few vagrants were criminals. They travelled alone or in twos or threes in their desperate search for work.

Question 3

What are the religious beliefs that influenced crime?

Answer 3

• Growing Puritan beliefs in the late 16th-century led to more punishment of moral crimes such as drinking, swearing, not attending church, scolding in public and sexual immorality (sexual activity outside of marriage).
• Between 1500 and 1650, there was widespread belief in magic and the Devil, which led to concern about witchcraft.
• People believed the Devil gave witches power through familiars (spirits in form of small animals which fed on the witch’s blood).
• Accusations of witchcraft often began as a quarrel between a rich villager and a poor, older women who had made a nuisance of herself.
• Witchcraft trials increased during the famine of the 1580s/90s and during the chaos of the English Civil War.
• The emergence of scientific ideas about the world in the early 18th-century led to a decrease in witchcraft trials.

Question 4

What was smuggling?

Answer 4

• The government’s dependance on import duties (taxes paid by the merchants who imported the goods) for its revenue led to smugglers secretly bringing goods into the country without paying the duty.
• Tobacco was a popular product to smuggle and from 1720 brandy, silk and tea attracted smugglers after their import duties were raised by 30%.
• Smuggling gangs were made up of a venturer to provide the money to buy goods in France or Holland, a ships captain and a crew to bring them across the Channel, and landers to bring the goods ashore on small boats.
• Smugglers included respectable people who disliked the duties, and poor people who could earn as much through smuggling as by doing a weeks honest work.

Question 5

What was Highway Robbery?

Answer 5

• During the 17th and 18th centuries, roads were built and travelling increased, which led to growing concern about highway robbers (gangs of robbers on horseback) attacking them.
• Roads were remote and badly lit, and people travelling carried their money and jewellery with them.
• While highway robberies were later portrayed in a romantic way as gentleman thieves, in reality they were often brutal thugs.

Question 6

What continued in law enforcement from the medieval era?

Answer 6

• There was a no police force so local communities continued to police themselves.
• Individual victims of crime made the descision to prosecute someone.
• The constable raised the hue and cry and people were expected to join in.
• Law enforcement was administered by unpaid and amateur officials, such as JPs, constables and churchwardens.

Question 7

What changed in law enforcement from the medieval era?

Answer 7

• As towns grew some started to employ more Watchman to patrol the streets, and arrest drunks, vagabonds, and other criminals.
• The most important change was the extended role of JPs from the 17th century more criminals were dealt with at petty sessions .
• as a result, the office of sheriff became less important than the manorial courts, and Church courts declined.

Question 8

What dealt with serious and petty crimes?

Answer 8

• The assizes were the country’s main courts for serious crimes.
• They dealt with ‘capital offences’ such as murder, manslaughter, grand larceny (stealing goods worth more than 12d), witchcraft and rape. Punishment could result in a death sentence.
• JPs met in the quarter sessions 4 times a year to try less serious crimes, including petty theft (goods worth less than 12d). During Elizabeth I’s reign, 1558-1603. JPs were given extra powers such as licensing ale houses, regulating local sports games and arresting vagrants.
• In the seventeenth century, small groups of JPs began to meet in their local areas to cope with the amount of work. They also dealt with petty crimes such as drunkeness.
• Manorial courts dealt with crimes committed by people on individual manors such as letting animals stray. These court duties were soon taken over by the petty sessions in the seventeenth century.
• Church courts concerned themselves with keeping up church attendance and Christian behaviour although they declined after 1660.

Question 9

How did individual communities enforce the law?

Answer 9

• With no police force, local wealthy men were appointed for one or two years as unpaid and untrained churchwardens, constables and overseers of the poor.
• Local people were relied on to help, for example, in providing evidence against the accused in witchcraft trials.
• The local officials were sometimes criminals or troublemakers themselves.
• The process of investigating a crime was often started by the victims, or people who were offended by a neighbours behaviour.

Question 10

How did humiliation and physical punishments increase as crimes increased?

Answer 10

• Public penance was used for crimes such as fornication. The accused would stand up in front of a church and confess to their sins.
• The pillory was used for those who traded unfairly or committed sexual offences. Offenders heads and arms were put in a frame where they were pelted with rotten food, stones and excrement.
• Disorderly women, scolds and dishonest tradesmen were paraded around on a cucking stool.
• Another punishment for scolds was the scolds bridle (a heavy iron frame locked on to the woman’s head with a projecting spike pressing down on her tongue).
• A harsher punishment was a ducking stool, which saw the offender tied to a chair with an iron band and repeatedly lowered into a river or pond.
• Stocks were heavy pieces of wood to keep offenders locked in position, often in a public place, so people could spit on, insult or kick them.
• Vagrancy led to an increase in whipping, branding and humiliation. From 1572, vagabonds over the age of 14 were whipped and burned through the ear.

Question 11

What were bridewells?

Answer 11

• As in the medieval period, prisons were mainly used to hold those in debt or those awaiting execution it another form of punishment.
• Castles, town gates and bridges continued to be used as prisons. Some new prisons were built after the 1531 Goal Act, which forced JPs to build prisons where they were needed.
• Bridewells were a new form of punishment where prisoners were forced to work or punished if they refused to.
• Bridewells were introduced as a response to the problem of vagrancy.
• In 1609, the Vagabond Act forced JPs in every county to build bridewells.

Question 12

What was the Bloody Code system (1688)?

Answer 12

• Capital offences other than treason were punished by hanging, which took place in public. There was no sudden drop so condemned person faced a slow and agonising death.
• The Bloody Code was introduced in 1688 and lasted until 1820. MPs used the threat of Capital punishment (the execution of offenders) to scare people into obeying the law.
• In 1723, the Black Act made poaching deer, rabbit and fish into a capital offence.
• By 1820, there were 200 capital offences, compared to 50 in 1688 and most of them were for crimes against property.
• However, the number of hangings decreased from the middle of the 17th century ad assize judges and juries were often unwilling to pass a sentence of hanging for minor crimes.